Speaker 1: 0:20

Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be taking a look at our late April winter weather. We'll be talking about some happenings in the state of Wyoming. We'll talk about happenings here in Hot Springs County at our state park. We'll talk about a little bit of early travel, summer tourist travel and also we'll talk about Teslas summer tourist travel and also we'll talk about Teslas. And finally we'll talk about Buffalo. Bill Cody, thanks for joining us and hope you enjoy the show.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Taking a look at Wyoming weather here on the 21st day of April, hope everyone had a joyous Easter weekend. He has risen. He has risen. Indeed, here on a Monday, a lot of places are just getting back going from that Easter weekend. Our weather here in the state of Wyoming has definitely been cool. We had some warmer weather, I should say, earlier in April, but boy, it's gotten cool. We had a snowstorm last Thursday into Thursday night here in Hot Springs County I think we got close to a foot of snow. It definitely was moisture that we needed. It's been bone dry. Most of it, or all of it's gone. Now it's melted into the ground. That's the nice thing about snow it definitely goes into the ground slowly. You don't get that runoff type of effect. So it's greened up the area and we're having cool weather here at the start of the week. It's in the 50s right now. It was cool this morning out taking the dogs for their morning exercise session and you had to have a jacket on with some gloves. You know, it looks like the week is going to stay that way, with maybe a little more moisture coming towards the end of the week, so end of April we are having some cool type of weather. But I'll tell you what. It's something that we really need here in our state of Wyoming.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Also, take a look at other items around. I always like to talk about our town of Thermopolis, wyoming, here in Hot Springs County, home to the largest hot springs. We've had kind of a controversy going on since the first year and actually it reared its head last year State deciding to reorganize and do things a little different at our Hot Springs State Park here and if you've been to Hot Springs County you know where the park is down, where the pools and hot springs are and the state has decided that they were going to take over and going to put different facilities here. One of the facilities they were going to shut over and going to put different facilities here. One of the facilities they were going to shut down was the Star Plunge and I thought that was going to be closed down later but they have closed it down at the first of the year. So it's been closed for the whole time and it's had an impact. We do have the other pool, the teepee pool, but most people went to the Star Plunge and so it's cut down on our visitors into Hot Springs County and the state's been pretty well, had a lot of meetings and such, but nothing's really changing on it. So we're going to wait. They supposedly are looking at also shutting down the teepee and then the hotels and putting up new facilities, so more or less making it some type of a theme park or such. Nobody really has a full understanding of what's going to happen, but it's had an impact on our community.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Another thing that's had an impact on our community we've suddenly became the fly shop capital of Wyoming Secret has been out for a long time of our fishing here in the Big Horn River. That comes from Boysen Reservoir through the Wind River Canyon, through Thermopolis. It's a blue ribbon trout fishing spot, hot spot. It's a blue ribbon trout fishing spot hot spot and the fly fishermen have been here for a long time, but it's just really starting to expand. For some reason this year we've had a couple of people here or businesses here that tailored to the fly fishermen, but boy, we've had a sudden onslaught. Looks like that we are now. Our new business growth is in fly shops At last count. If I correct, there are two new ones that came in that are here and bought locations. One of the companies that also did the whitewater rafting and such was out in the old Rita Pump building. They're building a new office or facility here or into town, and so we are. People have found out and the secret is no longer a secret and people are coming here just from everywhere.

Speaker 1: 5:24

So you see a lot of fishing guides coming in from Montana and other parts of Wyoming, colorado. They come here to fish with their clients and they're making some good money. That's definitely not a cheap trip to go through and go fishing with a guided drift boat and somebody taking you out. You're going to spend anywhere from, I guess, $500 to $1,000, depending. And then if you're going to fish in the Wind River Canyon, which is part of the Wind River Indian Reservation, you have to have a special permit and so it's pretty limited there. It gets expensive fishing in the Wind River Canyon. But that's our new business right now fly fishing and fly fishing shops. So we'll see how it does.

Speaker 1: 6:12

The state. Of course they keep the fish stock and of course most fly fishermen are. I would say probably 99% of them, if not 100%, are catching release. So I had a person tell me once that those trout have been caught so many times that they continue to like those flies and so we'll see what happens. But right now that's a big boom here in our town the fly shops.

Speaker 1: 6:39

So the other thing is summer travels is right here. Good time to travel right now. If I was a tourist going to come to Wyoming, now would be the time I'd be getting headed this way. With the cooler temperatures there's not a lot of people yet on the roads. Good time to go to a lot of these locations. Of course, here. Always stop by here in Thermopolis and take in the Hot Springs State Park. Always stop by here in Thermopolis and take in the Hot Springs State Park, and then your next stop will be up at Cody and into Yellowstone. I think Yellowstone hasn't opened yet the last I heard because of these storms and such the snow that we've had but it'll be opening really quick and then that traffic will pick up.

Speaker 1: 7:19

So State of Wyoming is just ready to invite people to come on and take a look at what we have. Again, I always tell, if you listen to previous episodes of the pod, talk about all we have around here in the north part of the state of Wyoming with our Bighorn Mountains and with Yellowstone Park, and then, of course, you have Jackson with the Tetons. East of us, going across the Big Orange, you go to the Black Hills. There's so many things. It's just always something you could do around here and a lot of nice trips to take. So check Wyoming out Great place to come and visit and see what we have going on here in our state of Wyoming Talking about non-Wyoming stuff, but I guess you could say it's Wyoming Talking about Tesla.

Speaker 1: 8:08

I just really I chuckled about the people that have been unhinged and attacking and destroying and sabotaging Tesla vehicles. I think it's starting to wear off a little bit because these people aren't very intelligent anyway. They never realize and I guess they don't realize that with the security that's on those that they're all getting their picture taken and and I see the FBI has started arresting people, charge them as domestic terrorists and they could go to prison for quite a long time for being a knucklehead. I started looking. I was never a true believer in an electric vehicle, being in the oil business for 40 plus years and I started looking at Teslas Just because the Tesla was under attack. I just felt like maybe I should just get a Tesla. You look at the electric vehicles and most of them have been pretty much a sham, depending on your situation. They try to push that upon us and it really hasn't worked out. But I've looked at the Teslas and you can get a used Tesla for a really good price and if they're under $25,000, you can get the $4,000 tax credit. I see how the Tesla would work for people in the right situation.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Now, if I was traveling a lot no, I would never get a Tesla if I had to do a lot of road trips. There's too much time spent worrying about where your next charging spot's going to be, waiting for your vehicle to get charged Just too long. It stops everywhere, I guess, if you're not in a hurry and you just like sitting somewhere and have your car plugged in, it's okay. But to me I just don't see it's functional that way. Looking at, like the Teslas, you're able to plug them in at your house and drive them locally. I think it works that way, but you want to use your local power. If you start looking at the cost of these superchargers, you get some pretty high bills. But if you can plug it in and you have a decent rate of electrical power and you have the 240 plug-in in your house and you can plug it in and you're not going to drive 300 miles plus a day, which most people don't it would work out pretty good.

Speaker 1: 10:31

So I've been looking at the Model 3 and the Y and trying to decide which one would I get, and so most of them. If you look at the 20 through 22s, with about 30 to 50,000 miles, you can find them for anywhere from 22 to 25,000. And then if you get the tax rate, you can get them down to in the low 20s or just under $20,000. So it wouldn't be too bad a deal. So I'll keep you posted to see if I decide I want to buy a Tesla. It would work perfectly. You can go out there and drive it around and come back and plug in at the house, drive it around and come back and plug in at the house. But if I went on a or needed to go on a trip, I would be a little skeptical.

Speaker 1: 11:22

To Billings. You could probably make it there. There's not a. The nearest supercharger for us here to Billings would be in Billings. So you would have to pretty much have pretty good conditions to make sure you could get up to Billings, about 180, 190 miles from Thermopolis. So you could probably do it if you had the long range and that's if you didn't have any other conditions happen or whatever problems. Now, going south from here you can make it to Casper superchargers there. Then there's also superchargers in Wheatland and Cheyenne and then you get down into Colorado. You can find them. So if you're going south you're not going to be in too bad a shape. But a lot of other places, man, it's going to be questions of where you're going to stop and plug in to get that electric power, because I guess that would be a bad situation to run out of electric power, to run out of electric power, and I know they've had stories on different publications about people here coming through Wyoming with their Teslas, and they had the one a couple of winters ago when we had the extreme temperatures, where they ran out of power, had problems on South Pass and they had to haul the car all the way to Salt Lake to get to a supercharger. So you could run into that problem.

Speaker 1: 12:36

I just hope that people can find more productive things to come up with and doing in their lives and worrying about burning down Tesla. I can figure out why people are upset. They're finding all this corruption going on in our government where all this money is being spent. We're just getting taken again and again and people are out there upset about that. There really should be just the exact opposite. They should be pretty excited about it. But of course, if somebody tells them what to do, they don't really have much in the way of brain power to think about what the consequences are or what's going on. They just go ahead and do what they're told. Tesla's. It looks like that may be slowing down and maybe I'm going to buy a Tesla. We'll keep you posted.

Speaker 1: 13:24

Today in our history section, take a look at an article about the Royal Hunt of 1913 with Prince Albert and Buffalo Bill, and always enjoy the stories of Buffalo Bill Cody. The story was written by John Clayton, wildhistoryorg. In late September 1913, a hunting party made its way up the north fork of the Shoshone River, north of the hunting lodge at Pahaskatepe, just east of the Yellowstone National Park. In some ways it must have been like any hunting party men awed by the scale of the wilderness, engaged by the camaraderie of their companions and eager to bag big game. Yet because of who these men were, the hunting party was unique. Prince Albert I of Monaco was the first reigning European monarch to visit the United States. Colonel William F Buffalo Bill Cody, a form of Wyoming and American royalty in his own right, was an entertainer even more internationally famous than Albert. Their presence made this arguably the best known hunt in Wyoming history. The trip was organized by AA Anderson, an artist, hunter, socialite and former superintendent of the Yellowstone Forest Reserve in Europe. Anderson had met the prince. He invited Albert to join him on a hunt near his ranch in the mountains above Matitsi, wyoming. But when Albert's private train arrived in the town of Cody on September 15, 1913, he found a good deal else too.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Park County Fair was underway, with rodeo events and the Crow Indian dances. Furthermore, the fair was being filmed by a company co-owned by Buffalo Bill. This was in the early days of movies, two years, for example, before the silent blockbuster Birth of a Nation. Cody Footage was intended for a film the Indian Wars which would set standard for infantry industry's production values, narrative troops and attitudes towards Native Americans. Its climax was intended to be sympathetic, a reenactment of the 1890 Ghost Dance tragedy, followed by the scenes approvingly showing Natives assimilating into white culture. While other company employees, including retired Army General Nelson A Miles, while other company employees, including retired Army General Nelson A Miles, began arrangements on the Lakota Sioux Reservation at Pine Ridge, south Dakota, buffalo Bill instructed cameraman Charles Kaufman to capture plenty of scenes of the prince exchanging gifts with Chief Plenty Coup of the Crow. Albert was also invited to oversee their fair activities, which were covered in newspapers as well by Kaufman.

Speaker 1: 15:58

The prince enjoyed this celebrity so much that he delayed the start of his hunt with Anderson. At the time. He needed some good publicity because not was all well in Monaco. His tiny principality in southern France was known primarily for the gambling mecca of Monte Carlo. Gambling made the royal family rich and eliminated any need to tax citizens. But Albert was an absolute monarch who had been facing three years of protest from subjects who wanted to establish a republic. Citizens were banned from the high-toned casinos, yet the small nation also liked factories or farmland, and as a result, unemployment was high. In 1911, albert had created an automobile race and established a constitution, but neither had much immediate impact. Meanwhile, the prince's real love was outdoor life, especially oceanography. He owned research yachts and made four cruises to the Arctic. Many of the cultural and business advances in Monaco itself, such as establishing an opera, theater and ballet, resulted from the work of his second wife, alice Heine.

Speaker 1: 17:00

At some point during the Park County Fair, or perhaps during preparations for it, buffalo Bill inserted himself into the hunting plans. At the time, buffalo Bill was in bad need of good publicity. Now, 67, he was struggling to keep up with the times and nearly broke. His famed Wild West show could not compete with movies. Transport of performers and livestock to each venue was cripplingly expensive. The latest version of Buffalo Bill's show, a partnership with Gordon William Pawnee, bill Lilly, had recently been foreclosed on and its assets sold at a sheriff's auction. Furthermore, bill's highly publicized 1904 divorce suit had tarnished his family-friendly image, though he and his wife had reconciled in 1910. Positive publicity could help his public image and his cinematic ambitions. After the fair ended, albert and Anderson spent a week successfully hunting on the Grable and Wood Rivers in the mountains above Matizzi. Then on September 28th they traveled with Buffalo Bill from Cody towards Yellowstone Park up the north fork of the Shoshone River.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Given the celebrity of Prince Albert and Buffalo Bill and the fact that they would be traveling with film crews, dozens of others wanted to join them. For example, charles G Spend-a-Million Gates got about hair to a barbed wire fortune who once bragged that he spent a million dollars a year in tips alone. He stayed overnight with them at Pahaska Tipi Buffalo Bill's Lodge near the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park, although Gates had hired guides through Buffalo Bill. The next morning the Gates party and guides left Pahaska in a different direction from the Royal Party. That party was quite large. Members included Prince Albert, aa Anderson, buffalo Bill, dr Louette, prince Albert's physician, often misspelled Rochelette, henry Boullée, albert's aide, decamp filmmaker Charles Coffin, buffalo Bill's son-in-law, fred Garlow and forest ranger Harry Miller, chief guide Fred Richards and cook David Shaw and several more guides, wranglers and camp tenders.

Speaker 1: 19:03

They made camp about 10 miles north of Paasca at Torrent Grit on a massive spruce tree, 5 feet in diameter, at the center of the camp. Henry carved out an area that he painted with a bear paw print and the words Camp Monaco, 1913. In one famous photograph they all pose in the snow around the tree. Several other photographs recorded camp life, as did some film footage. Kaufman filmed Buffalo Bill doing chores, including chopping wood. The implication was that the camp's organizer was too busy and important to participate in the hunt. In fact, however, buffalo Bill and Kaufman left Camp Monaco almost immediately after arriving because their film crew were overdue to shoot at Pine Ridge.

Speaker 1: 19:45

The hunt was successful. Albert had a wonderful time. He killed a bull, elk and a large black bear. The Northern Wyoming Herald reported that he was well pleased he had spent an extra several days in camp, delaying the departure of his private train from the Cody station. Stories and images from Camp Monaco permeated the press. For example, the Denver Post ran the Camp Monaco story under a full-page headline. The Post's owners happened to be Buffalo Bill's financier partners in the film company. They also sent a reporter to Chronicle of Filming at Pine Ridge.

Speaker 1: 20:18

The Camp Monaco Sojourn turned out to be the last big hunt of Buffalo Bill's life. He died four years later, however, the movie resulting from his film company's footage, the Indian Wars flopped. The nitrate film had disintegrated over time and only a few scraps remained. He had not been able to adjust to this new era. His final years involved continual financial difficulties. However, publicity surrounded the royal visit and the hunt provided beneficial to the local hunting and dune ranching industry.

Speaker 1: 20:47

Cody became known as a destination for trophy level hunting. Camp Monaco inherited the fame of its inhabitants. The site, which today features the stump of the old spruce tree, regularly appears on area maps and in hunting magazines. The 200-plus-year-old tree was one of the most famous victims of the 1988 Yellowstone Fire. The fire killed it but not consumed it. In 1994, a 5,000-pound portion of the spruce containing the campsite sign was removed by helicopter. It is now in a collection of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. Albert's great-grandson, prince Albert II of Monaco the principality is now a constitutional monarchy has visited Cody three times and on his 2015 visit, spent three days at the old campsite. As keenly interested in environmental affairs as his ancestor, albert II has endowed a Camp Monaco prize of $100,000, which is awarded every three years by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West to support integrated scientific research and public education initiatives.

Speaker 1: 21:53

The notion of Buffalo Bill's last hunt seemed poignant, especially in the light of the image of him chopping wood in the camp and his attempt to evolve the Wild West show into a movie-making friendly to Indian people. From one point of view, he has redeemed his old age, having processed from hunter and scalp-taker to caretaker, with the progressive attitudes towards indigenous cultures. Another interpretation, the Camp Monaco experience, where the triumphant frontiersman demoted to work basically as a servant to a moneyed class from elsewhere, is a metaphor for the decline of the romance of the West. As Sportsman's Magazine Outdoor Life described the view of the guide Lee Livingston in 2014, camp Monaco represented the transition of frontier buffalo hunter to big game outfitter, the violent American West reduced to a vacation destination for European royalty. This wilderness went from a landscape to be feared to one to be protected.

Speaker 1: 22:51

Again, another outstanding story from wildhistoryorg and just another great story featuring Buffalo Bill. Cody, thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. As per the code of the West, we ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming. We'll be right back. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 you.